Curiosity Rover's Self Portrait at "Mojave" Drilling SiteText by Lauren Edgar, member of the MSL science team

The previously acquired MAHLI images of "Mojave" drilling site show some really interesting crystals, and we’re excited to use CheMin to figure out what minerals are present.

We like to take "selfies" at each of the drill hole locations to document the site, and it’s also a good way to check up on the state of the rover.

The rover's robotic arm is not visible in the mosaic. MAHLI, which took the component images for this mosaic, is mounted on a turret at the end of the arm. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic's component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images or portions of images used in the mosaic. Please check video explanation by NASA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V3_zMD_S9c

This panorama combines 65 exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the Sol 868 of Curiosity's work on Mars (January 14, 2015).

The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".

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